


Scent

by kittybenzedrine



Series: Timelines [48]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, F/M, Implied Pregnancy, Magic, Mercenaries, Minor Character Death, Non-Explicit Sex, Semi-Graphic Content, Weird Biology, Worldbuilding, estranged spouses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2020-01-31 21:47:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18600043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittybenzedrine/pseuds/kittybenzedrine
Summary: A few weeks after Leo arrives home from fulfilling one of his mercenary contracts, he notices that Renee has begun to smell… different. He can’t place it, or describe the scent either. It’s not something he’s ever smelled before. The only thing he can find to even vaguely call it is ‘mine’, but that makes no fucking sense becausepossessiveness has no godsdamned smell._____All pieces of the Timelines series are standalones and can be read without context.





	Scent

A few weeks after Leo arrives home from fulfilling one of his mercenary contracts, he notices that Renee has begun to smell… different. He can’t place it, or describe the scent either. It’s not something he’s ever smelled before. The only thing he can find to even vaguely call it is ‘mine’, but that makes no fucking sense because _possessiveness has no godsdamned smell._

Frankly, it’s driving him up the wall that he can’t figure out what is is. The scent seems to grow just a touch stronger as the days pass, and it’s nearly overwhelming after a month and only seems to keep ramping up. It smells _good_ and he seems to be the only one who can detect it, which is probably a good thing because it makes him want to grab fistfuls of those brown curls and drag her mouth to his. Makes him want to take her to bed and endlessly drive himself between her thighs. The scent and its odd effects bothers him to no end, but he doesn’t ask her about it.

Over the past two years or so, she’s grown quiet and distant with him. Their talks have become infrequent, quality time gone completely, the sex unpassionate and rare. He knows a sudden flare of his own temper over the last decade likely has a hand in it, his own temperament growing almost volatile, though he’s done his best to cool it. Leo also does his best to stop directing his anger at her, but it doesn’t always work. She’s always been mouthy, lies to him about pointless things and always has something to say to him. But she’s downright vicious these days, like she’s trying to really push him.

He raises his hand to her, only once during an argument that almost devolves into a screaming match, but stops himself before he can do anything he regrets. Green eyes bore into his own as he balls it into a fist and drops it, refusing to strike her. But the damage is done. The distance grows wider and colder. The scent on her skin grows stronger.

Leo spends many long days thinking after that. This isn’t the man that he is. He’s a bastard, he won’t deny that. He makes his living through contracted murders, has occasionally maimed and killed just because it needed done. But he’s not like this. He’s not an angry person. Raising a hand to his wife, trying to hit her out of anger? Not who he is.

For once in his godsdamned life, he feels remorse. Genuine regret at his poor actions. He tries to apologize to Renee, tries to make things right, but she never responds to him.

When she tells him that she’s leaving for a trip one warm afternoon, her bag packed to the brim, he doesn’t try to stop her. He also doesn’t ask when she’s going to return. Leo knows full and well the answer will likely be ‘never’. Leo merely gives her a kiss that’s hardly reciprocated and wishes her a safe passage, keeping ahold of that divine scent for as long as his lungs will let him.

Life goes on as normal. He takes contracts that lead him all over the continent and keep him away from home for months at a time, except now he comes home to an empty bed. He no longer has to worry about an unstable wife with unfaithful tenancies. He no longer deals with the slight mental blemish of his own infidelity. There’s no more arguments, no more tensely quiet dinners, no more cold feet pressed to his bare ass in the middle of the night. Home is as peaceful as it was over a century ago before the two of them got together.

It doesn’t stop him from missing her down to his core.

A year passes, then two, and he has no word from her. He speaks to her family sometime, socializes with the last living niece they have. Tabitha’s received two letters in the past two years, but that’s it. Just checking in with her and nothing more. Leo figures this means Renee doesn’t miss him, and quietly goes about his life.

The next few years pass in a monotony of contracts. Kill someone here, kill someone there, torture this person and the contractor will pay him extra. It’s a blur, and he can’t quite bury the seed of emptiness that sits in his belly.

 

 

 

 

 

One of his contracts leads him to the foothills of a mountain about five years after she leaves. He was supposed to come here back in the winter and take care of his contract while he had the advantage of the weather. Being from a cold country, having lived on the streets in the snow as a child, he figured he could handle it. But the snow was too much for both himself and his horse, and he had to turn back until spring. Hopefully the focus of his contract is still here. The winter was supposed to keep the man pinned, but Leo’s hoping that the comfort of no hangman coming for him at such a vulnerable time will have left him soft and comfortable.

As it usually goes, most of the little village closes up shop the moment he’s noticed. His reputation proceeds him, and with a job like he has, that’s not a fantastic reputation. Normally he wouldn’t mind. He doesn’t fucking care if people think he’s scary. Half of his job is just being scary.

There’s a bigger issue with that, though. It’s a tiny village. With everyone hiding, refusing to answer their doors and clamming up when he asks questions, it leaves him with approximately zero answers. It’s irritating, but he deals with it. He’ll just have to make his way a little further up the mountain and try the charming technique next.

It’s just cool enough out as he makes his way up a trail that he doesn’t sweat under the warmth of the afternoon sun. There’s a singular house just up on a hill before it leads up to an even tinier village further up the mountain. He spots a tiny moving figure outside of the home as he walks, and he keeps a vague eye on it as he muses about his lodging for the evening. He’s either going to need to find someone kind enough to take him in for the evening, or he’s going to have to backtrack a long way’s back to the last inn that he saw. Which by then the news of his arrival may travel up the mountain and the man could flee, which would cause even _more_ work for himself, yadda yadda… Leo ties back his hair as he weighs his options.

The moving figure turns out to be a small girl playing outside under the clothesline, her dress wet halfway up and the hem covered in mud. Looks about four, maybe. She’s been playing in her mother’s wash basin he’d bet. He’d also bet her mother’s going to whip her for getting mud in the wash basin once she notices. Mother’s nowhere in sight though, and he’d bet neither is her father. He likes to ask children questions, they’re honest even when told to lie on most occasions. They don’t know _when_ to lie, not yet. Young enough that she can’t properly lie, and she’s unattended. Perfect.

The scent hits him as he gets close. It’s just barely there, and once more in his life, he finds a smell that he can’t describe well. The child smells like _wrong_. That much though, he understands. It’s an adaptation of his species’ already overly sensitive senses. The smell means they’re related. As far as he understands, the particular adaptation developed after his species nearly went extinct many millennia ago. They all bred with each other to keep from dying out, and eventually the smell emerged after too many generations of children came out inbred and wrong. It’s a warning system of ‘too closely related, move on’. With how intense the scent is, he figures this little one may be his.

He finds it a little amusing he’s come across one of his many children this far out, but stranger things have happened. She blinks a startlingly green pair of eyes up at him, and frowns at him with a down-turned mouth that looks exactly like his own. Leo blinks at her, taking in the features that don’t match his own. Messy brown curls, slight upturn to her little nose, pale skin that certainly didn’t come from his own olive tone. The child doesn’t seem afraid, just looks him over with a calculating look that he’s certain came from him as well. After a moment, she wrinkles her nose.

“I don’t like how you smell.”

He gives her a nod, putting off the questioning for a moment. “Good. Means your nose works.”

She points a filthy, mud-covered finger at the equally disgusting wash basin. “You need to take a bath.”

That gets him. Leo gives her a small sound of amusement before shaking his head. “It’s not sweat, child.” He curls back his lip, shows off the sharp points of his teeth. He saw her own sharp little chompers when she spoke a moment ago. “Our kind can smell each other. That smell means we’re… kin. We’re related somehow. If someone smells like that, means you shouldn’t-” he hesitates for half a second, “marry them.”

The child stares at him for a long moment, processing the information. Without a word, she breaks contact and reaches down into the basin, her little arm straining to reach to the bottom until she finally fishes out a waterlogged doll. She gives it a glance over before squeezing some of the brown water out of it. Green eyes come back to his own brown ones.

“Your turn.”

“I’m not getting in that.”

“You better not have gotten into my washing water!” he hears a woman’s voice call as the front door of the home creaks open. “I told you to stay out of it!”

The woman rounds the corner, drying her hands on a food-stained white apron. He follows the motions of her hands before looking to her face. She’s scowling down at the girl, but glances up up when she notices the strange man just a few feet from her daughter.

Renee.

Her hands slow for a moment when they meet eyes, but then carries on like normal, reaching to tie her unruly brown curls back. She adverts her look for a moment, seeming surprised.

Leo glances to the child before catching her eye once more. “This why you left?”

Renee is silent for a few long moments before shaking her head and advancing towards her child. “One of the reasons.” Then, with a newfound fury towards the girl, “What did I tell you? Look at this! You’re absolutely filthy _and_ you got my washing water muddy!

It’s fascinating to watch his estranged wife shout at her child, and the child just stand there and take it. The little thing hardly blinks. Not cowed the way many young children are when receiving a verbal lashing, not angry either, the kid looks like she doesn’t care. Genuinely doesn’t give a shit. The reprimand seems to be going in one ear and out the other, if she’s even actually listening in the first place.

When most of her steam has run out, Renee wipes her already dry hands on her apron once again. “Go in the house before I spank you,” she threatens, shaking her head at the child. She points at the little home and the girl starts moving after a moment, her little dress and doll dripping murky water all the while. “You’re getting on my last damn nerve today.”

A long moment of silence passes, and then the heavy slam of a door breaks the quiet. Leo watches her eyes close and can tell from the tension in her shoulders that she’s about a second away from losing her godsdamned mind. She opens them back up after taking the time to compose herself, and looks into the dirty water with a mix between anger and exhaustion. The girl’s little dolly was at the bottom, he recalls, but he’s still a little surprised when Renee reaches in and pulls out linen that he’s pretty sure should be white and not brown. Dropping it back in, she lets out a shaky breath of poorly veiled anger.

“Do you need… help?” He absolutely does not want to help. He doesn’t want to empty the child’s mud water and he certainly doesn’t want to risk getting his nice clothes dirty. But Leo feels that he should extend the offer. Out of courtesy, if nothing else.

“I can’t believe I wanted a family with you at one point in time,” Renee tells him, fury still in her face. “If I had know that it would have an attitude like _that_ -” she jerks her thumb back towards the house, “-I would have just kept my fucking legs closed.”

Well. A little ruder than expected, but Renee’s always been like that.

“Hello to you too, Renee,” he says. “Yes, it’s lovely to see you again as well. You’re looking well, too. I know, yes I’m a long ways out, but the contracts take me far and wide.”

He’s met with a silence before she tells him, “If I had my sword on me, I’d run you through.”

“You would try,” he agrees. Even tries to sound sympathetic.

Renee turns on her heel at that, marching barefoot back to the door. He follows with little else to do. She leaves the front door wide open behind herself, so Leo can only presume that’s her silent way of letting him know he’s free to come in.

There’s water all over the floor, as expected, and a little dress left in a muddy heap just in front of the door. No child in sight, but he can hear something moving in one of the rooms. Renee shouts once more with entirely too much heat in her voice that _you’d better be getting dressed in there!_ and heads towards the kitchen area. There’s plenty on the stove, and it all smells pretty fucking good if Leo’s being honest. If she wasn’t his wife, and he didn’t already have someone for that, he’d have had her make every one of his meals back when they still cohabitated. Her cooking is superb.

“So what brings you out this far?” she asks, lifting the lid on a pot and stirring the contents. “A contract, right? Come taste this.”

Leo gives her a nod. “Man leaving a trail of bodies across the continent and none of the killings are related. Just a senseless murderer. Had a few victim’s families band together and pay me a nice sum for his head. Last known location is further up the mountain.” He tests the broth she offers out, the liquid so thick it’s almost a gravy. He rolls it in his mouth a moment before swallowing. It’s damn good, but... “Needs more salt.”

They spend a better part of the afternoon talking. Renee tells him everything she can about the man, first. She’s fed him a few times, mended some of his clothing at request seeing as he has no wife and is admittedly incompetent. He asked her odd questions about different species for a while, but stopped when he found out that while she’s gifted with magic, she’s fully human. Asked a few questions about Rachel’s teeth. But they haven’t had much interaction past that. Last she saw of him, he retreated up to his cabin in the woody area further up the mountain and hasn’t come down since. Maybe he’s dead, froze or starved from not enough winter rations, or maybe he’s still hiding out. Maybe he left and she just didn’t notice. Either way, all she knows is that he was alive three and a half months ago.

She feeds Leo without him asking, serves him a bowl of better salted stew when she sets everything out on the table. The child did not dress herself they come to find, but Renee seems to have no problem with the girl sitting at the table half naked. It’s not hard to tell why when she starts eating. A lot of the stew ends up on her skin instead of in her mouth, and while he frowns at her being so messy at this age, he can’t quite say anything. He himself eats like a ravenous animal.

Renee scowls watching the two of them eat, careful to keep brown stew drippings off of her dress, and mutters about the irony of her little farm girl self having better table manners than a baron. Leo makes a point to look her in the eyes as he licks his bowl clean. The child sees him and follows suit and Renee kicks him under the table, though he hardy feels it.

 

 

 

 

 

He learns that the girl’s name is Rachel later in the evening. Renee calls her by rude nicknames throughout the evening, mostly ‘you little shit’, but the child’s full name comes out in full when bath time rolls around. She doesn’t have his surname, he notes, but it’s expected. Renee’s surname is the one passed down, not the other way around. Her family was once important, apparently, important enough that even the female heirs gave the family name rather than taking their husband’s. Her mother passed down the surname instead of her father giving his own, and Leo is unsurprised to hear there’s not a trace of his name anywhere in Rachel’s.

Bath time is a nightmare that he only hears from the other room. Thankfully he doesn’t have to participate. For all of her playing in the laundry this afternoon, it’s a surprise when Rachel screams bloody murder the entire time Renee bathes her. There’s an equal amount of shouting from his wife, barely heard over the banshee shrieks of the child, and the little one manages to break free just once.

Anticipating where she’ll go, Leo takes a vigil at the front door, barring the wet, angry child from bolting out into the night. She scowls and spits something rude at him, tries to take off in another direction, but she delayed too long at the door and Renee manages to catch her and drag her back to the tub. He can’t help but note that Renee’s dress is soaked about as much as the child is.

“I’m not even washing your hair tonight!” Renee shouts as she shoves Rachel back into the water, raising her voice to be heard over the screaming.

Well. Gods above, Leo does _not_ want to be around when it comes time to wash the little girl’s hair.

Thankfully the little one is worn out from the bath fiasco, and goes to bed without fuss. Even agrees when Renee tells her she needs to try to sleep in her own bed tonight. She gives Leo a long look over her mother’s shoulder, her little green eyes half-lidded and dark underneath, her mouth down-turned in the way his own usually is.

“He smells bad, Momma,” he hears the little one mumble as she’s being carried off to bed.

“He smells just fine to me.”

And just like that, there’s silence.

Renee comes back after about ten minutes, still soaked, looking exhausted. She sits next to him with no fuss, resting her head on his shoulder as she finally lets all of her air out. She’s just as tired as the little one, he’d wager.

“Motherhood is shit,” she grumbles into his shirt. “And you smell fine.”

“Kin smells bad,” he tells her, leaning back slowly enough that she has time to shift with him. “She’s not wrong. She smells just as foul to me because we’re closely related.”

Renee shakes her head a little, further sagging against him. He forgets that even though she decided to be with him, she’s not particularly fond of nonhumans. It’s likely that she doesn’t understand, and it’s equally as likely that she doesn’t _care_ to understand either.

“I presume you’re staying?”

Leo shrugs a little, jostling her. “I don’t have any other plans.”

She grunts, peeling herself off of him and getting to her feet. It’s early spring and the nights are still cold, she must be freezing in that wet dress, he thinks.

“Then turn out all the lamps before you go to bed. I’m exhausted and heading to bed myself.”

Leo rises just after her, shaking his head. “No need for that. I’ll go now and stare at the ceiling if I can’t sleep.” He does help her turn out the lamps, however.

Just as she did earlier, Renee leaves the door open behind herself and does not turn around when Leo enters the bedroom after her and closes the door. She doesn’t stop him when he reaches out in the dark, his eyes adjusted to the lack of light, and begins undoing the row of buttons down the back of her dress. Large hands and small buttons don’t mix well, but with enough patience he gets the back of her dress open. His fingers slide under the fabric on either of her shoulders and he gently pushes at it until it slides down her arms, taking the rest of the fabric as it goes. Eventually there’s just a puddle of fabric around her ankles and his hands slowly making their way towards her chest.

“May I?” he asks in a low voice

“It’s been so long since I’ve had anyone touch me,” she admits, leaning back into his frame as his hands roam her body.

He can’t say the same. He’s found his pleasure where he can, but he’s only taken a few women in the time they’ve been apart. Nothing even remotely similar to companionship. Just cheating wives fucked against barns while their husbands are in the house, young women looking for the thrill of a stranger taking them in a tavern room rented for only a few hours.

But this isn’t the same. His hands have touched this body thousands of times in just this way. He knows how to make her sigh, knows what makes her shiver and what makes her beg. He knows what she likes, knows sexual preferences that she still won’t admit, knows how to make her finish in ten seconds flat.

He knows she likes it when he undresses before touching her, so he kisses at her neck and shoulders while taking off his nice shirt, leaves his cleans pants on her floor next to her dress and presses his bare body to hers. Leo turns her around, kisses her, urges her backward towards her bed.

Leo knows her tonight, for the first time in years, in every carnal sense of the meaning.

 

 

 

 

 

Renee is kind enough to help him prepare for his journey up the mountain come morning. It should only take him two days to get there, she says, maybe three since he’s not familiar with the area. She visited the man once, just as winter hit, to offer him an extra blanket and a meal in exchange for some firewood. There’s a lot of dense forest around his cabin, she warns, and it’s fairly easy to get turned around out there even when it’s not snowing. Leo’s confident, however.

The journey does end up taking him three days due to lack of familiarity. He finds the cabin easily enough once the time comes. It’s in a clearing, a man-made one, with the stumps of chopped down trees encircling the area like a big bright sign. With what Renee described, this should be the right place. She told him there’s only two other cabins this way, and they’re much closer to the summit of the mountain. So, unless he went too far, he’s about to be done with this contract.

He’s patient enough to knock and wait, at least. And the man is polite enough to answer his door without delay, opening it up wide.

“Brightly Keller?” Leo asks, already reaching for his own hip.

Leo only hesitates long enough to get a look at the man’s face when the door is opened. Judging by the other’s immediate look of terror, Leo’s sure he has the right person. Though the bastard doesn’t deserve it Leo does his best to make the death quick. It’s messy, however. Death via knife always seems to be messy, _especially_ if you’re trying to take someone out quick.

The arterial spray is hot on his face, and the man bleeds out on the floor in less than a minute, choking for air. He waits, patiently, watching as the puddle under the man grows and grows and finally stops. It’s been long enough that the gray bloodless skin should be telling of death, but Leo pricks the other in the ribs just to be sure.

Dead. Most assuredly dead.

Leo takes the time to search the body over, taking any jewelry or valuables. There’s a ring in particular that he needs, one that he needs to present to the families to prove the man is dead. The rest he’ll sell as a nice little bonus for himself. And it’s going to be a good bonus judging by all of the shit he’s pulling off of the guy. A pocket watch, some gold rings that are far too small for Leo’s own hands. There’s probably a jewelry box around here somewhere, if he looks hard enough.

There’s a lot of books, too, which seems odd. Why would a mass murderer need so many books? Did he enjoy reading that much? Writing too, now what he’s looking. There’s journals and books everywhere, many with dried up quills scattered far and wide and an inkwell half empty on the dining table.

He picks some up and looks them over. Some are vaguely interesting, some he couldn’t care less about. The dichotomy of ocean fish means very little to him unless the one he’s being fed is toxic. Nor does he care about woodworking. But there are books here on the three different humanoid species. Now that’s interesting. Some of them are laid open and appear to be hand written and not made on a printing press. The handwriting looks similar in many of them. All written by the corpse on the floor?

There’s one in particular that catches his eye. One particularly focusing on the dichotomy of the different species. Perhaps he’ll find something interesting in this one.

There’s a small index in the back that’s bookmarked, listing out dozens of translated terms. It seems the different species are referred to by languages native to where the respective species originated. His own kind are _aves dec crocs._ “With fangs”. And the beautiful ones are _efirnny_ , he recognizes that one as it’s in his native tongue. The ethereally beautiful.

He skims through the book, keeping his eye out for anything interesting. There’s things on their overly sharp teeth, the heightened senses. Notes that that only sight, hearing, and smell are affected, but touch and taste seem to be about level with that of humans, Leo privately disagrees on the taste, but whatever. Can’t exactly correct a dead man. He skims a bit longer, and finds an expanded section on scent. He finds himself sitting in an overstuffed chair, still soaked in blood, actually interested in the contents of this little leather bound book.

 _They almost went extinct a long time ago, from what I can gather. It correlates to a semi-documented war over two to three millennia ago where most of the_ crocs _were wiped out. They were a lot more toothy back then, I believe, seeing as the teeth are what they’re named for. If they were that much sharper that’s pretty fucking scary. Most of the ones I’ve met have scar tissue on their tongues from accidentally touching their teeth when talking. Explains the accents._

_(Remember to cut some of that out on the final cut of the book.)_

_With their species nearly going extinct, they had few choices. Breed with the_ efirnyy _and water down their own genetics? Breed with humans, the very species that just tried to wipe them out? Or, breed with what’s left of their people? They chose to stay with their own kind._

 _After a few hundred years of breeding like that, many of the children started coming out wrong. Many birth defects were documented, as well as mental disabilities. It also caused a notable decrease in size, as they used to be much taller than they were. Tall_ crocs _are a rare sight these days._

 _A lesser but equally notable issue was once more with the teeth. Often the teeth would grow in like that of a shark and overcrowd the mouth, but they loose teeth like human and_ efirnyy _children do. Lose baby set, grow adult set. But that wasn’t happening, which left these young children with rows of teeth spreading further back across the roofs of their mouths. So a lot of the time, they had to repeatedly pull teeth until more finally stopped growing in._

 _To try and combat this, their senses heightened. As_ aves des crocs _were originally nocturnal cave-dwelling peoples, they already had the advantage of inhuman hearing and vision. But the sense of smell began developing in a way that it never has in humans or_ efirnyy _, even in communities where close genetic inbreeding has been common for hundreds of years._

 _They slowly developed a way to smell those genetically close to them._ Crocs _that I’ve spoken to have told me they can’t stand the way family, especially their children, smell. Most can’t find any other way to describe it other than their kin smell “repulsive” or “wrong”. The scent lessens the more distantly related one is to another. The scent doesn’t seem to be unique to degree of relation. They all seem to smell varying levels of “wrong”. First cousins seem to smell bad but not as strongly, whereas siblings almost have to hold their noses around each other._

 _Interestingly enough, I’ve learned something that not a lot seem to know about. No matter what a male_ crocs _breeds with, be it human,_ efirnyy _, or a fellow_ crocs _, the female always takes on a unique smell. Even if they breed with a close genetic relative like a sister (which was disgusting and I want to forget about that couple), the female losses the foul smell and takes on the unique scent. It only happens with children that are biologically theirs, as a wife pregnant through infidelity has no notable change in scent. (Though_ crocs _men and women alike have noted that women have a faint sort of sweet, milky scent when they become pregnant.)_

_The same scent happens for pregnant females, but to a lesser extent. It also only happens with the man perceived to be the genetic father. A woman who committed adultery and got pregnant noted that her spouse took on the smell, but that the man who ended up being the genetic father had no scent to him at all. So with the women, it appears to be psychosomatic more than anything._

Crocs _men have described their pregnant women as smelling like “theirs”. They have nothing to describe it with other than pure possessiveness. Both partners notice that the male’s libido increases greatly for the duration of the pregnancy due to the scent, and doesn’t begin to wane until after the child is a month or two old. Men who are away for most of the pregnancy don’t note any change in libido, so it can be inferred that the scent plays a large role in the increased sexual response._

_(Reorder those last two paragraphs in the final draft)_

Leo hums to himself and closes the book. It’s an interesting read. Deeply informative. He actually learned something about his species from this book. What a shame this man was a mass-murdering shit, really and truly. He certainly could have made it big as a scholar.

Ah well. Leo gets to his feet and looks around, hoping to find a satchel or a bag of some kind. Something to take home the most interesting of the man’s books. He’ll let Renee know that the cabin is here after he’s pilfered what he wants out of it, he knows she likes to read just as much as he does. If she wants nothing, she’ll likely give it all to the local school teacher. He still needs to find that jewelry box that he’s certain exists.

 

 

 

 

 

It takes him only two days to return this time, since he actually knows where he’s going this time. Renee seems pleased at the prospect of new books, but quietly asks him if he’s done anything with the body or if he just left it. She was once a warlord, she’s had her share of death, but she doesn’t know anyone well enough to hand Rachel over for a few nights and doesn’t want the child exposed to such gore while she’s so young.

While he won’t deny that there’s blood everywhere, he figured that was a possibility and already disposed of the body in the woods. The corpse is probably picked clean by now. It’s good enough for her, at least.

Just as she had when he first showed up at her door, she feeds him once more, takes care of him along with her child. _Their_ child, he corrects, as her foul stench lodges itself in his nose once more. That’s his child that he made with his wife. Privately, he wonders if he can get Renee to come back. If he can convince her he’s a changed man. He’s missed her more than he can find the words for, and he knows he can grow to tolerate Rachel.

But he’ll do that later. At present, he’s trying to figure out what that other smell is. It’s barely there over the stench of his child, but whatever it is, is driving him up the fucking wall. It’s a good smell, he just can’t pinpoint it. Renee watches him from the stove with a raised brow as he walks all around her home, breathing deeply and sniffing around much like a dog. After half an hour, he somewhat narrows it down. It’s in the kitchen, but he can’t figure out _where_.

_____

 

Both of them are close to asleep when he nuzzles up to her for warmth, resting his chin on her shoulder. Renee’s always been so soft, made of gentle curves and thick padding. It’s always a treat to touch her, to feel the plush skin give under his hands as he squeezes and strokes and touches her to his heart’s content.

He presses his nose to the crook of her bared neck and takes a deep breath of the scent of her skin, lets it out slow. There’s something there that he catches, just faint enough that he wants more. He buries his face closer and draws in an even deeper breath while trying to discern what it is.

“You smell good,” he murmurs against her throat, feeling much more awake. He tells her because she does. She smells really, _really_ fucking good. It was her, he thinks, causing that scent he couldn’t find earlier.

Renee grumbles and loosely swats at him as he kisses at her neck, mumbling that she doesn’t want anymore. She wants to sleep, dammit, Leo stop. He doesn’t. He keeps kissing at her throat, slides a hand down between her thighs and press his fingers into her, still wet inside with his semen. Vaguely angry noises are made in his direction, but she spreads regardless. Her scent overwhelms him as he grinds against her hip, his mouth wet at her throat and shoulder as he delves his fingers deeper into her. God, whatever she’s done today, she smells _divine_.

Leo has a brief moment of clarity in his drowsy mind as he gets back on top of her, takes a moment to breathe in her scent once more. She smells like- like _his_.

Oh.

Oh _fuck_.

**Author's Note:**

> Temporarily back from the dead. Work is killing me but I still try to make time for these assholes. And by 'make time' I mean add 4.5k to a work in less than 24 hours and call it good.
> 
> I'm always super appreciative of comments and kudos, it's great to hear from you folks!
> 
> I have [my blog](http://iwillpooponthefloor.tumblr.com) on tumblr, if you'd like to check that out, though it's mostly unrelated content. I'm not active much on there, but I'll get back to you if you message me!
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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